Author's note:

This story features characters from Marvel comics. Despite that fact, it is not reliant on the Marvel universe at large, just three characters. Because of that, and the fact that being elsewhere would open it to more views, I have decided not to place this work in the crossover section. Thank you for the time you take to read my disclaimer and my story, and enjoy.

Prologue:

"Death, Nothing but Death."

Dubai

2215 Local Time

The lone scuba diver swam through the dark waters of the Persian Gulf towards their destination. A container ship anchored off the coast of the city. From a hundred feet under the ocean, the hull of the tanker above looked like some alien object hovering in the sky. The diver swam upwards slowly, stopping periodically to stave off any decompression from the sudden change in pressure. Shrouded in the dark of the waters, the diver held their hands against the hard metal of the bottom of the tanker.

There was a satchel attached to the diver's side. The diver reached their gloved hands into the satchel and produced a round metallic object. It was a small charge capable of breaching the thick hull above. The diver placed the rest of the charges in the satchel, a dozen in all, around strategic spots on the hull. The bombs would only be used as a last resort, if nothing else could be salvaged. The diver's head popped from the water and groped through the dark towards the starboard side of the boat.

The diver held their hands against the tanker's metallic side and pressed their palms to the sheet metal. The gloves in the diver's hands made a low electronic whine and then attached themselves to the metal on the side. With the glove's powerful electromagnets activated, the diver began to slowly scale the side of the tanker. They came to the railing nearly a hundred feet above the water and climbed over it and on to the deck of the tanker.

The diver stripped away the aqualung, gloves, and flippers. Pulling away the mask, James Bond breathed his first breath of fresh air in nearly an hour. He checked the coast to make sure that there were no sentries or prying eyes before he hoisted his scuba equipment over the side of the railing and let it drop to the water below. There was a quiet splash as the gear floated to the bottom of the ocean. Better it be wasted than to have some guard discover it and raise an alarm. Bond reached into the satchel at his side and removed his Walther PPS, wrapped in plastic to keep the water out. After making sure it had stayed dry, Bond checked that the magazine was full and then chambered a round into the gun.

"007 to Mother," he said into the microscopic microphone implanted in his back molar.

"Mother here," said a crisp voice in Bond's ear. It was M's chief of staff, Bill Tanner. "You have the green light to go play with the neighborhood boys."

With MI6's approval, Bond wordlessly began his journey across the deck of the tanker. The ship in question had paperwork that identified it as coming from Yemen, but Bond and Six knew that wasn't the case. In reality, the ship had come from Jakarta a week earlier. Bond knew, because he had been in Jakarta just after it had set sail. He had investigated a lead that his old friends HYDRA were preparing to launch another terrorist attack. Bond had gotten the intelligence from HYDRA's weapon master after breaking about twenty of the two hundred or so bones in his body. Now, Bond was infiltrating the ship to confirm that the weapon was on board. As soon as he gave a signal, British Special Forces along with the UAE Coast Guard and police would raid the ship and arrest all those involved.

Bond's wetsuit shoes were silent as he crept across the deck of the ship. Shipping containers had been stacked all across the top of the ship, creating a twisting and elaborate maze. Bond turned a corner, but quickly backed up when he saw the dull light of a cigarette tip in the dark. He glanced a peek and saw a guard. The heavyset Indonesian man had a gun, just a pistol from the way it looked. He didn't seem to carry himself like a man would if he had anything bigger than a handgun. Bond crouched and stepped back from the edge of the container. He willed himself to get as low as he could as the man approached. The guard came into view, his eyes not seeing Bond in the dark. Once he was past, Bond stood and swiftly struck him in the back of the head with the butt of his pistol. He splayed to the ground, dazed. Bond kicked him in the head and bound his wrists with nylon zipties to make sure he stayed down. With the guard unconscious, he continued his journey.

He covered the deck in quiet and peace, coming to an entrance that led down. He leaned against the side of the door and looked down into the doorway. There was dim lights that went down a level before disappearing into a stairwell. This, Bond knew, was where it would get hard. He activated a button on his watch. Q Branch's latest toy, it had been designed to send out a short EMP burst every ten seconds. In theory, it would make Bond electronically invisible to any cameras or detection devices he met. With the watch activated, Bond ventured down into the carrier.

He hurried past an opening when he heard the sounds of snoring and soft Arabic music being played on a radio. He only looked back to make sure his suspicions had been confirmed. Nearly a dozen men were sleeping in bunk beds. Bond figured a skeleton crew working the boat. That appeared as a bit of a double-edged sword in his eyes. If there was a smaller crew, that meant fewer men for Bond to avoid. But that also could mean they weren't carrying anything illegal.

Bond put that out of his mind and continued down. He came to the ship's cargo hold. Shipping containers filled the hold to its brim, each one stacked upon another one all the way up seventy-five feet or so. Bond holstered his gun and scanned the area. He found what he was looking for just beside the entrance to the hold. An old desktop computer with a nicotine stained keyboard.

"The shipping number?" he asked Tanner in a low whisper.

"India Romeo Hotel Sierra Tango Niner Eight Two Oscar."

Bond typed out the serial number Tanner had relayed to him and pressed enter. Item IRHST982O was on the ship, and it was in a sector relatively close to his current location. Bond came to the shipping container and found the padlocked entrance. He reached into the satchel and pulled out a small case wrapped in plastic. Inside the case were a set of lockpicks, a miniature torch, a flashbang grenade, and the remote detonator to the charges underneath the ship. He picked the lock and quietly opened the door. He turned the torch on and shone the light into the container.

"Contact," he said.

Inside the container was a device no bigger than the engine of a diesel truck. It had tubes running from it that connected to two large vats of chemicals. Alone, the chemicals were relatively harmless. But the machine combined the two chemicals together and created NP0198AZ, a chemical agent that was three times as powerful as mustard gas. After mixing it, the machine would collect the gas into a canister and then shoot it out of a CO2 pressurized barrel into the air. Placed at the right spot at the right time in downtown Dubai, the machine could easily kill thousands.

"Kipling," Bond said. The go word for the operation.

"We have eyes on the machine," said a new voice. Not Tanner's, but the deep voice of M. "All units move in. Disable it and pull back, 007. The SBS and UAE men are moving in as we speak."

Bond confirmed and started into the container to cut the wires to the chemical vats. He was just a few feet in when he heard footfalls from behind him. A loud click followed the footsteps. Someone pulling back the hammer of a gun.

"Not so fast," said a voice behind Bond.

He turned and saw a tall, Indonesian man with a 9MM Glock in his hand.

"Hands where I can see them."

Bond complied, palming the flashbang grenade with his left hand. The Indonesian man began to walk into the container towards Bond. The man had a look of smugness to him that only came when one was certain they had attained absolute victory.

"Won't do you any good," said Bond. "Authorities are already on their way to the ship. Doesn't matter what you do now."

"I think it does," he said with a smirk. It was then that Bond noticed he had a switch in the hand not holding the gun. "You think this machine is the only one HYDRA has? It's one of many, my friend. We already have five inside the city, another twenty aboard this ship. Your friends step foot on this ship, I activate the ones inside Dubai and kill as many people as I can."

"We have the shipping manifest," said M into Bond's ear. "Says here six containers have been dropped off to the mainland sine their arrival in Dubai."

"What do you want?" Bond asked, stalling for time.

"Death," he said coldly. "Nothing but death. I'll bargain my way out of this mess and then detonate the machines we have in the city. Regardless of what your people try to do, HYDRA will succeed. You may cut off one head, but two will-"

"Oh, blow it out your arse," Bond said with a sigh. With the pinkie of his hand, he pulled the grenade pin and tossed it at the man. He turned away as the bright light exploded in the small, dark space. The man screamed, holding his eyes and stumbling around in pain. He dropped the detonator and Bond rushed forward to grab it. He ducked to avoid the man's flailing and nabbed the detonator from the ground. He tucked it into his satchel and pulled his pistol towards the blind man, but stopped when he saw him crash into Bond's small carrying case. Confused, he picked up the detonator to the bomb's under the ship.

"HAIL HYDRA!" he screamed.

"No, you goddamn git!"

That was all Bond could get out before the explosions rocked him backwards. He slammed into the side of the shipping container as the ship vibrated heavily. The sound of the charges going off had been replaced with that of rushing water.

"Get out of there, 007!" ordered M.

Bond looked back at the blind man. He was now crawling on the floor and groping for some way out. Bond slammed the container shut behind him and slipped the padlock back in before running through the hold. Water was already ankle-deep in the hold. By the time he got to the stairs, it was up to his shins and rising. Crewmen were running around frantically, not caring who Bond was or what his purpose was here. He was halfway up to the deck when the entire ship shifted sideways. He slammed hard against the wall and fought against the gravity as he climbed upwards.

There was the sound of groaning metal below, followed by a loud metallic snap. Bond came on to the deck, now seeing that the cause of the snap was the hull cracking in two. Cursing, Bond raced towards the front of the ship and felt the deck slide under his feet as the bow of the ship began to rise into the air. He knew he had to get free of the boat before it sank. The suction that accompanied the sinking would drag him to the bottom of the ocean. Running as fast as he could, Bond came out of the maze of containers and rushed towards the bow. There came another snap, this time the front half of the hull was nearly vertical. Fighting against the slippery deck, Bond leaped from the boat's front port side and straightened his body out as he dove the hundred feet to the water below.

He splashed into the salty ocean water and positioned his body parallel to the surface. Bond used the speed of his fall to distance himself from the sinking tanker. He began kicking after the momentum slowed, ignoring the sounds of swirling water in his ear. After a minute's swimming and not feeling the suction, Bond surfaced from the ocean and looked around. The tanker's tip was barely visible above the choppy waters of the ocean. It was rapidly descending down into the water. Bond treaded water and looked around for any other survivors.

"007 to Mother," he said between breaths. "I'm about a hundred yards due west of the shipwreck."

"Stay where you are," said Tanner. "Chopper's inbound to pick you up."

Bond's breath relaxed as he looked towards the bright lights of Dubai. HYDRA's weapons, save for the few that made it to the city, were out of commission. The rest would be a simple mopping up exercise that involved following the trail of the shipping containers to where they were delivered. He had the detonator, and he had stopped the devices from being distributed. For the most part, it was a mission accomplished.

Unbeknownst to Bond, there was someone watching him nearly a mile away. In a perch on a highrise beside the shore, a sniper sat and watched through his scope. He had just watched the events play out with a playful smirk on his lips. This Bond was a rare specimen. A man who was as dangerous as he was chaotic. The sniper had been shadowing and studying him for nearly a month. Now, like countless times over the past four weeks, he had Bond right in his sights. His night vision scope had been lined up perfectly with the man's head in the cross hairs. One squeeze of the trigger, and no more Bond. But that was not the sniper's orders. SPECTRE didn't want a dead James Bond, they wanted a stalked one. When the time came, the sniper would pull the trigger. But until then, he watched and waited.

The sniper was sure that, when the kill order came in, he wouldn't do it in this fashion. No, James Bond deserved more than just a bullet in the head from long-range. He had to be bested face to face, the sniper needed to watch Bond's eyes as all life left them. Bond was a prey of the finest caliber, and just the sort of prey that kept Kraven worthy of his title of Hunter.

Ian Fleming's
James Bond
007

In

Maker's Mark